Volunteer

Monday, December 29, 2014

Below is a beautiful
reflection written by Sue Bumagin, a NPH supporter, regarding her first trip to NPH
Honduras.

My
husband, Paul, and I had been supporting a now-fourteen year old girl for three
years and we were finally going to meet her!
We chose to go the week
before Thanksgiving because there was to be a huge Quinceanera
celebration. On our first night, we watched some
celebrants busily prepare party decorations as we were shown the glittery and
strappy shoes that each had chosen for the festivities as well as an enormous
cake. Sadly, a boy who had been quite ill died the
day before all this was to occur so instead of celebrating, we went to a
funeral Mass attended by the entire community. Each child had an
opportunity to say good-bye by the open casket (face only) and many little ones
took it. While such a process helps to define death as a natural part of the
life cycle, these children have already known more than their share of sorrow
and loss. During our stay, there were big moments – like the funeral; and meeting our godchild and her delightful younger sister. Despite language differences, our goddaughter worked as hard to communicate with us as we did with her – and that’s saying a lot for a 14-year old! We had a good time baking together after which, she brought the cake back to her residence to share, saving one piece for her best friend and another for her sister – but not one for herself.

There
were also many little moments that touched our hearts - like sitting in a big
circle with the three to nine year-olds amazed that not a word was spoken while
the children ate their lunch. They may
have been taught to be quiet for the sake of minimizing chaos but the silence
seemed almost reverential. Food is such
a precious commodity. I exchanged a
smile and eye contact with a young boy who had chosen to sit outside of the
circle. After a brief conversation with
our eyes, the boy moved in to sit next to me.
It was such a sweet moment. Other lovely experiences included watching
Paul swing a tiny girl who’d clearly wanted to be on the actual swing with the
bigger kids but was too small to do so; or a boy proudly reading aloud to Paul
from the English/Spanish storybook that we’d brought with us. These were lovely moments.

One
day, we accompanied the children to an event sponsored by Tom’s Shoes and UNICEF
at a military base about an hour away.
There we were joined by hundreds more children from all over the country
for a day of fun, food and most importantly, new shoes (Tom’s is an American
shoe company that donates a pair of shoes to someone in need for each pair sold
– support Tom’s!). When cotton candy was
distributed, a boy of around eight years old accidentally swiped past Paul,
leaving a yellow mark on his T-shirt.
Thinking nothing of it, Paul rubbed it off with some water. Hours later as the busses were loading,
Monica (who’d been trying to get the kids onto the bus) approached us with this
boy and his brother or friend in tow. He
was practically in tears. Refusing to
board, he kept saying that he had to apologize.
He thought that he’d ruined Paul’s T-shirt. I can’t describe the lump in my throat as I
thought about this boy worrying all afternoon and insisting on ‘making it
right.’ We told him that it was
‘absolutamente no problemo!’

In
the course of our brief stay, we experienced sadness; and joy (dancing with
Yami); the enjoyment of meeting volunteers from different parts of the world;
and the triumph of flipping all the tortillas in time at least once under Dona
Gloria’s watchful eyes. I have to
believe that such experiences - enhanced by about a thousand hugs - keep our
hearts more open to letting in the good and doing good.

Thursday, December 18, 2014

The below entry was written by NPH
Leadership Student Nelson Alvarez about the emotional experience of meeting Pulitzer
Prize-winner Sonia Nazario at an NPH event in Seattle.

Written
In English By Nelson

What can I say? This experience started in one of our leadership meetings.
I said something about an article that I
read on Univision, and it talks about a social issue, migration. I was surprised by this article because this
media shows quite relevant numbers about migration especially highlighting the
children that every year cross the borders to find their mother that left them
when they were 5 years old or less. So
when Kara asked me if I wanted introduce a writer, the main question that I had
in my mind was “who is Sonia Nazario?”
And immediately I said yes.

Then my host family gave me a brief biography on Sonia Nazario. A few days later my host family bought me
“Enrique’s Journey.” When I started
reading the book I did not want to stop reading this wonderful book. My
experience reading Enrique’s Journey has been one of the most important in my
life because this book talks about a reality that we are living now in our
Central American countries, where thousands of children are traveling every
year, crossing the borders to find their mother in the U.S., and we see that
our governments do not do anything for these people, but I know that people
from other countries are working hard for us.

I will never forget the day when I met Sonia Nazario on December 4. When I met her I remember that I was reading
my speech and she came in front of me and I said, “I cannot believe it.” I could not believe what was happening in this
moment because it was all so fast, but then I realized that I was talking with
Sonia Nazario. Something that I always remember is a question that she asked me
when we were talking before the conference. The question was: “Are you an orphan?”
And at the beginning I was laughing
because of the directness of her question.
But my answer for her was, so I do not have mother and father, but I
found a new family and this family is NPH. I think that NPH is my family
because it always has supported me, always been there in my difficult and in my
happy moments, and given me so many opportunities.

When I was at the podium introducing her, my first three minutes I felt
nervous but then I felt comfortable because meeting her before the conference
helped me a lot. This experience for me is one of the most important in my
life, because I met a brave, courageous woman who is fighting for the people
who do not have A VOICE IN THIS SYSTEM, and the poorest people, and I realize
that there are people working for those people.

I learned that all the pain these people suffer to get to the USA is
priceless, just because in our countries people do not have an opportunity to
have their basic needs met, so this is the main reason why people have to
emigrate to provide the best for their children, such as education, healthcare
and food.

The experience of reading “Enrique’s Journey” definitely changed my way
of thinking about this problem, and I realized the poorest people who do not
have a lot are often the people who share the little that they have with each
other.

This book connects to my life in many ways, first because the boy who she
talks about is Honduran. Second because since he was a little boy his father
abandoned him besides his mother. My case was the same because my father abandoned me and my mother died
when I was two years old, so both of us were abandoned by our fathers. It is
why I say I, like Enrique, could have been one of the thousands children
traveling every year crossing the borders.

I liked Sonia when I met her before the conference because she looks
friendly, and I could talk about topics that I like to talk about. I really
enjoyed having a conversation with Sonia Nazario especially because she knows
the reality of my country.

Thursday, December 11, 2014

The below is a powerful Christmas message from Fr. Rick Frechette, National
Director, NPH Haiti

Only two
weeks ago, on a cold and wet night, at this time of the year when the darkness
of solstice heralds the birth of the Savior, a mother with nowhere to go,
hovered timidly near our gate.

The night was
pregnant with both danger and destiny, as was the night when Jesus was born. We
ourselves were as unaware of what was happening, as was the world of 2000 years
ago. In the darkness and quiet of night, God shapes the life of a new day, and
God’s instruments are dreams, inspirations, intuitions, deep rest, and silent
growth as we sleep.

In vain is
your earlier rising, you’re going later to rest, you who toil for the bread you
eat, when he pours gifts on his beloved while they slumber (Ps 127:2).

But the
shadows of night can also torment the weak and innocent, and lead one down dark
paths of despair and destruction. The young mother at our gate was confused,
weak and innocent, and in danger.

She was only
a teenager. Her pregnancy was a scandal. She didn’t know where to go. There was
no room for her at any Inn.

Her story
was, once again, the story of Mary, lived out so many times throughout history.

It wasn’t a
jealous king that didn’t want her child to live: it was her father and her
boyfriend. It wasn’t by the teeth of the dragon of Revelations, nor the sword
that brutalized the holy innocents, that her child was to die, but by the
instruments of abortion.

This is what
was ordered for her by the men in her life, and this is what she fearfully
promised to do.

It is also
why she hid from them for these last few months, until she quietly had her baby.

She could not
end the life of her child. She was sure she could find a way for her child to
live. Now the baby was born, but found no welcome in the world. For this woman
to reclaim her own place in the world, it must be without her little girl.

She hovered
by our gate, as the mother of Moses had hovered over the basket holding her
son, in the river.

She watched
for who and how and when her baby might be saved, as Moses mother had kept her
eyes downstream, on the daughter of the king, bathing in the river. She chose
carefully the moment when to release the basket, letting the river carry Moses
to new life.

It was
different for the mother at our gate. Her choices were poor, with grave error
in her calculations.

She had not
considered the time between her leaving the tiny child in the brush, and us
finding the child at sunrise. She had not considered that the cold and the rain
would drain all the heat from her baby. She had not considered the ants. The
fire ants. The terrible fire ants.

And so the
sunrise brought not the joy and promise of new life wrought by God during the
night, but rather agony and death.

As Moses
mother had later offered herself to the king’s court as a wet nurse for her own
son, so this young mother returned later in the morning to discretely take news
of her baby.

The news was
terrible. The child was dead. There was lamenting and wailing in the street.

“A voice was
heard in Ramah, weeping and loud lamentation, Rachel weeping for her children;
she refused to be comforted, because they are no more” (Matt 2:18).

This story
tormented me for days. I was a witness to the short life and sufferings of this
baby, whose life we tried impossibly to save.

I am sure
this story torments you. Our sadness would be multiplied if we knew how often
this happens, if we knew how tough the world still is for young women of
poverty and their children.

The birth of
Christ is not a story oblivious to suffering and danger. Christ was born into
this suffering, as light in the midst of suffering. At first His light was a
tiny infant light, which God augmented and multiplied by a dancing star and
legions of angels.

In time, his
light would grow, as He grew in wisdom and grace. The darkness also grew
darker, and the cold grew colder, but his light would become deep and
invincible.

Let us thank
God together that this is the heritage given us by the Christ Child. We are the
bearers of light, holding high the bright lights of faith, of hope, of love.

This is our
heritage, that by each of us offering our light, we have made the darkness of
night as luminous as the Milky Way.

And even
more, when we ask God to bless the light we all hold up together, God augments
and multiplies our light, until even the darkness is radiant.

“even the
darkness will not be dark to you; the night will shine like the day, for
darkness is as light to you, and the darkness is radiant in your sight” (Ps
139:12).

Let’s thank God together that for 60
years, we at Nuestros Pequenos Hermanos have built homes with this marvelous
light, that we have been a beacon of hope for children in sorrow, distress and
illness, and a safe haven for countless children over these decades, and their
way to a stronger and happier future. Our homes are as needed today as they
ever have been in our history.

But let’s
also not let our guard down. While the vast majority of the children who come
to us for help do not suffer tragedy at our very gate, as did the baby girl of
whom I write, the forces of darkness and destruction are not at all far from
the doors of our homes.

With prayers
for struggling mothers and anguished children all around the world at
Christmas, let us hold our lights high and together, as one light, begging for
and counting on God’s blessing, as we always have.

Thank you for
being light for the children of Nuestros Pequenos Hermanos! Wishing you a
very Merry Christmas and every blessing in the new year of grace, 2015.